Family Outing

One of the many reasons I love our neighborhood is that it feels like a cocoon when you enter it. Tall, mature elms and Oaks block out the heavy traffic nearby, lavender, green lawns and large lots provide trappings of privacy yet there is a distinct feeling of neighborhood. Within this wooded and private retreat, we are lucky enough to have friends and family who live nearby. Best of all, the twins have two boy second cousins, one the same age as them, and they love to have rowdy light saber and robot battles. My daughter bosses them all around.

My favorite occasions are when one of the families hosts a dinner and instead of having to say no, we don’t have any babysitters, we are told to bring the kids along. Best of all, we walk a brisk 10 minute wooded trail to reach the cousins.

The children play together and tend to work out their own battles (mostly) while the adults adjourn to the outside table, overlooking the lawn and play area. It’s comfortable, we hold witty banter and just enjoy the company.

Tonight’s Menu: Smoked brisket, potatoes lyonnaise, broccoli and a homemade chocolate cake in preparation for Darcy’s birthday (in a few weeks).

After a spirited and disturbing discussion of “Deliverance” (which I have never seen) we retired home, pushing the stroller within our safe confines, with me pushing the Citi-Mini a bit faster than necessary because of the chill that had settled in quite suddenly.

We changed and tucked our little ones into bed.

I never had cousins who lived nearby and I feel privileged to be able to provide my children with this experience. The twins and their younger cousin are almost like triplets because with such close birthdays, they will enter their kindergarten class together. This makes me very happy.

He also makes me very happy.

Are you close to extended family? Do you like to interact with them?

The End of the Road

My neighborhood is at the beginning of a long road, one named for the famous explorer who “discovered” California. As if it hadn’t been here the whole time.

My husband’s car has been unreliable in the last few months. It’s been to the repair shop a few times. The long faithful automobile is 14 years old (in fact it was constructed the year Darcy and I met) and Darcy had been postponing the inevitable for quite a while. (Mostly because of the plumbing and repairs to our basement that need to be done.) But he finally had to give in and purchase a new vehicle this weekend.

We decided to take it out for a spin with the kids. He drove along our long road for many familiar, happy miles until we reached a sunny seaside town that I love, where we ate oysters gathered a mile away.

Full and happy, we decided to do something rather foolish. We decided to follow the road until the very end, where the land meets the sea and a lighthouse marks the divide. Neither of us, even though we are locals, could remember visiting this landmark.

We set out for our journey amidst the bright sunshine. “Where are we going?” my daughter asked. “To visit a lighthouse,” I replied. “There’s a lot of fog where lighthouses are,” proclaimed Cassandra.

Almost immediately after her prediction, we winded up the two-lane byway and ran straight into some wisps of cloud which became a regular bank of that heavy, migraine-producing white pea soup the Northern Pacific Ocean is renowned for creating. We also noticed a steady stream of cars headed back, ominously, towards the sunshine.

“Should we go on?” Darcy asked. We both tend to get headaches from heavy fog.

“Yes,” I replied steadily. I wanted to reach the end. I wanted to show the children that lighthouse.

Google maps did not indicate just how many hairpin turns and winding sections our road produced. Our road! The one which was so orderly and well-traveled near us had become wild and unpredictable, with cattle grates and cars passing slower vehicles. It took 25 long minutes to go but a few miles. Finally, we reached an area of thick traffic, thicker fog, and cars parking along the side of the street. One car was leaving.

“Let’s park there!” I exclaimed.

We did. And we joined throngs of families and couples and tourists, hastily wrapping themselves in cardigans and sweatshirts, bracing themselves against the wind.

“I want to go back!” cried my daughter. “I’m cold!”

Darcy stopped a young couple heading back, towards us. I thought maybe they were honeymooners.

“How far to the lighthouse?” he questioned.

“40 minutes, at least,” explained the man.

“What?” I started. “How?!”

“You have to walk 15 more minutes,” the woman said. “Then you have to wait in the line for the tour. There are so many people waiting for the tour that you can’t get past them. You can’t even see the lighthouse, it’s so foggy.”

Well, we went back. We weren’t ready or prepared to wait in line. Our clothes were too thin. Our energy was too low. Our heads had already begun to ache.

“I want to see the lighthouse!” my son cried.

“Another time,” I said. Another time.

So we went home and I harvested some chard from our garden and cooked it.

After dinner, I read this extraordinary post about Luna’s blog, from Sam, a young woman. Luna is parenting after infertility and loss, and the woman notes:

“I started reading (Luna’s) story at the point she got pregnant with her second daughter. I read through her pregnancy up to current posts. Then I went back to her very first post (4ish years ago I believe?) and have been reading from there forward. It’s been actually really cool for me in a weird way. Since I know how the story ends, since I know what’s next, sometimes I find myself smiling when she talks about the pain of thinking she’ll never be pregnant again. Or the uncertainty of the adoption process, if it will work, if they’ll have a baby, if it will be a good relationship. I smile because I know how it ends. I can see 2 years down the road. I smile because I just want to say: it’s right there. Just hang on.”

Would you want to see to the end of the road? Not just your journey through infertility, but to the end of your story? Why or why not?

Mom Makes Everything Better

My mom’s here.

My mom is the most nurturing person I know. She has bottomless reserves of patience and kindness. To have her here while my daughter is ill makes me breathe more soundly. She’s reassurance incarnated.

Tonight she watched the twins while I made a childhood favorite in my dutch oven: chicken with olives and spaghetti. It’s much more complicated than that: I should come up with a fancy name for it. (Justine?) When my mom is here, food tastes more wholesome and nourishing. Why is that?

Tonight I am thankful. In the end, it’s the simple pleasures that make me the happiest. I hope I can remember that in the future.

Is there someone in your life who makes your life a better place just by being in a room with you? Who is it?

Treading Water

We live in a culture that venerates self-help, self-improvement and making your life the MOST it can be.

Right now I’m in a phase where I am barely keeping my head above water, much less improving myself. My daughter has been pretty ill, and I’ve been back and forth to the doctor’s office a lot. I’m spending most of my time getting her to get her blood drawn, to take various medications, getting her to eat and drink and then, the worry. I’m trying to manage the worry. I’m still blogging because it’s the only time I can take a breath and it’s necessary. Just last week, Darcy and I actually managed to see a movie, Moonrise Kingdom, which was brilliant. As I ate my stealth burrito and watched art, I felt alive again. That seems a million years ago.

I am treading water, again. I have a virus too, but soldiering on is the only alternative. The worry strips me of my lifeblood.

Some days, I can’t even imagine improving myself, only enduring what will come in the next minutes, days, hours.

Then the crisis passes.

Please let this crisis pass us by.

On Being a Night Owl

I’ve never been much of a morning person.

In college I used to avoid classes scheduled earlier than 10:00 AM as much as possible. I just never felt fully awake or engaged before 10 AM. My first real job was an internship with seriously weird hours: 5-10 PM weekdays and 9-5 weekends: I was working for a political consultant and with campaigns, every hour counts. I LOVED those hours. Eventually I began my career as a PR professional and the morning issue became irrelevant: I needed to work every single hour possible to get the most work done. I still found my best work was completed from 5-10 PM, and I often worked late, but I needed to be “on” in the mornings too. I think adrenaline was the key to my being able to handle the mornings, because most of my most important meetings were in the mornings and I was able to excel then. If I had to.

I was in that profession for a long time. Then I got very ill.

It took me a long time to recover from that illness: about a year. After that, I worked from home. I was primarily a customer service person and a very good and devoted one. But I worked seven days a week, and odd hours.

Then (eventually after a ton of crap) the twins were born. My husband was both working a grueling full-time job while pursuing an MBA at night and on the weekends. He just wasn’t available to help most of the time. The twins were preemies, and needed feeding around the clock. (My daughter needed to be fed every 1-2 hours because of acid reflux.) I was pumping and breastfeeding and my supply was awful. We couldn’t afford a night nurse. And so, I became the night nurse. At first, my parents stayed in our city for six weeks and relieved me at 7 AM every morning so I could sleep a few hours. Then my brother joined in a month later. My MIL would come evenings to share the load, and my FIL, when the babies were old enough, would come every afternoon to help me down from our third story walk-up so we could take the twins for a walk. I can’t stress enough how critical this help was.

My day would begin like this: at about 10:30 or 11:00 AM my mom would wake me up. I’d go get a Jamba Juice (I had to have the Matcha Green Tea Blast) then my day would begin in earnest: pumping, then feeding then burping then playing then napping (with my anxiously watching their every breath) then breastfeeding then pumping then medicine for my daughter, then changing diapers then bathing. Rinse and repeat until 6 AM.

I loved the late evenings. Darcy would be home from business school at 11:00 PM, and would immediately go to bed because he needed his seven hours of sleep to face his insane schedule. And I would stay up. I watched a lot of old movies on low volume, and kept a hawk eye on my babies. I have extremely fond memories of this period. I watched “Mrs Miniver” for the first time (a favorite now) and sang the kids lullabies from the Karaoke channel and read the Aesop fairy tales to them. My daughter had to be propped up a lot because of her reflux, and was feisty from the get-go: her distinctively loud voice was prominent from the moment she was born, when she screamed so loudly that everyone (and there were dozens) of people in the OR laughed. My son was (deceptively) laid-back and mellow. It seems to me looking back that I was at my full potential during this time: I really rose to the occasion. Was it the schedule? Or is this the evolutionary thing everyone talks about, where you don’t remember how hard labor was so you’ll do it again? I don’t know. But I think this period was my finest moment, my Churchill war years if you will.

Rollin’ with my Homies

But my body clock is still messed up by it. I detest getting up, still, everyday, at 7:30 AM. It feels like torture. I love to write at night. I love to read at night.

Are you a morning or night person? And if you are one or the other, why?

Scorched Earth

Image: Wikicommons Media

I had to run a few errands yesterday, and left the kids with a wonderful babysitter.

As I was driving back from the store, I noticed a lot of smoke billowing on a hillside near our home.

I panicked. Traffic thickened with cars rubbernecking and I leaned on my horn and let loose a string of shouted expletives. They wouldn’t budge. I did a U-turn and took a local short-cut but the smoke was spreading and spreading. I called my babysitter, who reported that she was seeing white ash land in our yard and a lot of smoke in the air.

I have rarely been so terrified. Luckily, our local firefighters were able to quickly control the fire and while it briefly threatened homes it was quickly extinguished. But to watch that fire spread closer to my children while I was powerless to stop it or get them was beyond scary.

Later, I took the kids out for Chinese food and on our way home, I pointed out the black scorched hillside to them. My daughter was extremely disturbed by the damage done to the hill and the land. It really upset her. “The hill got hurt!” she kept saying. Seeing that charred slope was the first time she has noticed that sometimes, bad things happen. She cried and cried. I tried to reassure her that eventually the rains would come and heal the earth and bring back the green grass and the wildflowers. “But, when?” she kept asking, “Tomorrow? Thursday? Friday?” Most poignantly to me, she asked, “Can I make the hill green again?”

I had to explain that no. It was not in her power to make the hill green. Sometimes, we have no control over what happens to our hills, to our lives.

Obviously, I explained this as delicately as I could. But what a difficult message this was to have to impart to a child!

How do you explain the harder aspects of the world to children?

On Mommy Wars…

This about sums up the first year…

I think the “Mom Enough” controversy pretty much paused with a truce, with everyone raising the white flag and calling for peace on all sides. Including me.

Now there has been a minor eruption over a parenting philosophy which, correct me if I’m wrong, seems to have caught on with a significant portion of the Parenting After Infertility crowd? I had never heard of “Natural Parenting” before, and suddenly the term was everywhere.

Specifically, this graphic was everywhere. I’m not going to comment on the graphic, as I think others have covered it in detail.

Like for others, the term “Natural Parents” immediately stuck in my craw. By calling your philosophy “Natural,” you are by implication saying that other parenting philosophies are “unnatural.” But, I wanted to go over and review the blog on its merits and see what the fuss was all about.

What immediately struck me is that many “Natural” parents who’ve posted on the blog feel persecuted and underground. Which, that’s rough, and I feel for you. Where I live is probably one of the only areas in the world where attachment parenting (breastfeeding, midwives, babywearing, extended breastfeeding) is mainstream and “mainstream parenting” (strollers, disposable diapers, bottle feeding) is not mainstream at all. (See also: Park Slope, the Upper West Side, Berkeley, Notting Hill, and probably other areas with a strong liberal political bent.) I have to admit that “pottying”, ie: potty training your infants, hasn’t caught on yet here. But I’m sure that it’s just a matter of time.

The “Natural Parenting” blog has a much more pleasant tone than I was expecting. Mostly, if I can simplify, the tenor seems to be attachment parenting is the ideal but if you try your best, no judgments. Am I right about this?

Attachment Parenting isn’t about ‘shoulds.’ It’s about connecting with and loving your baby. There are some practices that foster those connections, and some of those practices, though intuitive, aren’t mainstream. Therein lies the problem, and a harvest-ready field for media looking to stay alive with stories.

OK. I mostly get this.

Here’s what I don’t like:

I have a dream that one day, babies will be birthed in peace, and spend their first hours in the arms of their loving, capable mother. One day, we will respect the birthing mother, and remember that birth is normal, and has been the primary exit route of people for millennia.

I have a dream that one day, mothers will have the resources and support they need to nurse their babies for as long as they both desire. I have a dream that one day, Americans will see breasts as primarily life-giving and nourishing.

I have a dream that babies are carried instead of pushed, cuddled instead of prodded to be independent. One day, we will redefine spoiling as dying from disuse, rather than strengthening from love and closeness.

I have a dream that one day babies will sleep safely, close to their mother, as her breath regulates baby’s temperature and heart rate, ensuring his survival. One day, we will move beyond scare tactics and onto education.

I have a dream that we will relearn the lost art of gently responding to our baby’s elimination cues. One day, diapers will be optional.

Yeah, I DON’T like this. It strongly implies that there is one way that ALL babies should be birthed and parented (with co-sleeping and babywearing) and to do otherwise is bad for a child. (I don’t like the phrase: “ensuring his survival.” Talk about scare tactics…) Am I wrong? Did you pick up that tone, too, or not?

And ultimately, “Mommy Wars” are caused by those who feel their way is best and that everyone else should adopt their ways. The media helps to fan the flames, sure, but ultimately it’s doctors pushing C-sections, hospitals not allowing midwife care, or someone who says she has a dream of babies being carried not pushed.

We ALL need to be careful about the language we use, and I don’t want to single out this particular site as a main culprit: they are just suddenly ubiquitous, so a lot of people are looking at them. On another front, this book is inflammatory as hell.

Is it possible to remove judgmental language from parenting advice altogether? Or are we doomed to conflict with one another? And feel free to call me on any judgmental language I have ever used about parenting, too.

“Bringing Up Bebe”: Book Review, Part Two

Stumbling Gracefully is hosting a book club and the book we are currently reviewing is “Bringing Up Bebe,” by Pamela Druckerman.

In Part One, I revealed my own roots as a Francophile and my connections to France.

So, Part Deux: The Review

Pamela Druckerman is an ex-pat who lives in Paris and, like many writers before her, she finds fruitful writing ground in cross-cultural differences. Specifically, she finds her own child-rearing techniques lacking compared to the French parents she meets. She notices that French children behave well in restaurants, sleep through the nights early on and seem to have a politeness and belief in the authority of their parents that her own children and the American children she knows do not. So she sets out to find “the secret” to the way the French raise their children.

In light of the Time Magazine “Mom Enough” controversy and the very real “Mom Wars” currently raging in the US, I’m tempted to say that there IS a secret and that is: there doesn’t seem to be any debate in France at all about how to raise children.

But, let me move on to what Druckerman observes. She first notices that culturally, childbirth is different in France:

“French moms often ask me where I plan to deliver, but never how. They don’t seem to care. In France, the way you give birth doesn’t situate you within a value system or define the sort of parents you will be.”

The national health system there covers Druckerman’s hospital stay for six days. There is not the strong focus on breastfeeding in France either. Most women don’t breastfeed there.

This is explained partially by the state-covered childcare, which Druckerman extols in terms of its quality and availability. With such a system in place, the vast majority of French women return to the workplace: there isn’t the same agonizing of whether to stay home. Staying at home seems to not even interest the vast majority of French parents Druckerman knows.

Druckerman also notices that most French infants begin “doing their nights,” or sleeping through the night, very early: usually beginning at six weeks. Druckerman figures out, after interviewing French parenting authorities and parents alike, that French parents use a method she calls “the pause.” “The pause” essentially means that when a baby cries the parent will “pause” and wait to see if the child can self-soothe and fall asleep quickly on its own before picking the child up.

And with “the pause” begins perhaps the central tenet in French parenting, as Druckerman describes it. “The pause” is an introduction to the key French concept of delaying gratification. They teach children to wait before eating dessert, to wait before rejecting food they haven’t tried and to wait for their parents to finish talking before they chime in. That’s not to say they are not tuned in to their children: part of what Druckerman observes is that French parents are very attuned and listen to what their children say. They just don’t necessarily give in to what their children want.

Also key: the sense of “cadre,” or parental authority. The authority of the parents is pretty absolute. What seems different to Druckerman is that French parents seem quite confident in laying down the law. There seems to be no hesitation or guilt when parents tell their children “no.” And the word “no” is apparently not used sparingly.

The relationship between the parents is apparently treated as sacrosanct. Ayelet Waldman’s infamous New York Times article would probably have been totally ignored over there. Says Virginie, a French parent:

“The couple is the most important. It’s the only thing you chose in life. You didn’t choose your children. You chose your husband. So, you’re going to have to make your life with him. So you have an interest in whether in it going well. Especially when the children leave, you want to get along with him. For me, it’s the prioritaire.”

I could go on and on about the two major influences of French parenting authority (Rousseau, who my dad pointed out abandoned his own children at an orphanage, and a pioneering woman in the 60s named Francoise Dolto) and the advantages of the creche (daycare) where delicious three course meals are served to children.

But here’s where I note my impressions of Pamela Druckerman. She is a charming writer, and an insecure woman amongst a population of beautifully dressed women who seemly maintain it all: their looks, their weight, their jobs and their love lives with their husbands. I mean, I get it. Sub in Lulemon yoga outfits for skinny jeans and boots and impossibly fit physiques and Pamela is me: feeling like a fish out of water.

I tend to take a more skeptical look at things than Druckerman, however. I have to admit that I gave the book the side-eye a few times. Druckerman would repeatedly tell the same story: she would think she wouldn’t like a certain parenting technique then she tries it and BOOM! It works! Eyeroll.

Mainly though it raised the question: why? Why do we Americans constantly feel so insecure and unsure about how to raise our children? Why are we so defensive about what choices we make? Why ARE there so many choices on how to parent?

Here’s where I decide: I’m going with what my parents taught me. I’ll never be the amazingly nurturing personality my mom is, but I’ll do my best. I agree with my dad that education, politeness and teaching your children to question are the defining virtues of parenting.

And, I will do my best to not compare that and contrast it with what’s out there. Because I’m doing my best. That will be enough.

Final cultural note from my in-laws who just spent a month living in Paris: they went out to dinner with friends with children and the children did NOT sit during dinner, they were LOUD and they didn’t particularly listen to their parents EITHER.

So, there’s that.

And here’s a photo of my children and myself in the latest styles of Paris, as procured by MIL. Because I’m shallow and what I love most about France is the fashion and the food

To read more reviews, click here.

Living As an Ex-Pat in ParentLand

There have been some tremendous responses from people who read yesterday’s post.

And if you haven’t read Esperanza’s post, trying to answer the questions I raised, please do.

Because I think she has really uncovered how so many of us feel as parents after going through infertility.

I lived in London for two and a half years. I was never truly an English person, even though I paid taxes there and used the NHS and ate crisps and wine gums and went to pubs and tried to pick up the slang. My skin had the marks of skin damage after living my whole life in California: native British people of all races have the most beautiful, luminous skin. On the other hand, I have pretty straight teeth after years of braces. That cliche is so true that a client once said he could suss out who the American was (he had never met me) by having my whole team smile. He pointed to me immediately and said: “Her!” But the obvious marker was, of course, my accent. And that I couldn’t decipher a lot of what people were saying. Especially Scots! Toughest accent to crack, ever.

I never quite bonded with any native Brits. They were just at a natural advantage in their homeland: they had lifelong friends already who knew habits, history, remembered the Falklands War and spoke in a shorthand version of English. I liked them and respected them (what they thought of me I’ll never know, you Brits are SOOO reserved!) but I wasn’t one of them. I couldn’t PASS.

So, I bonded with ex-pats. These were ex-pats from many countries: the US, Canada, Nigeria, India, Bulgaria and France. We had quadrants: we were probably most tight with our fellow Americans, and likewise for others of other nationalities. But we all loved to hang out together and we were essentially each others’ family. Because we knew. We knew we didn’t pass, that we never would, that there were differences between us and Brits. Differences we would never be able to overcome.

Likewise, when I had my twins, I thought I could safely make passage to ParentlLand. For two years, I tried like hell to “pass”, to fit into the culture of the other parents. But there were things that were different: these mothers had not struggled to get to ParentLand: they were natives who were born being able to plan their exact entry. They had very little fear, they didn’t have preemies who had to be fed every two hours, there were deliberate gaps between each of their children. They breastfed for years. Like my American accent, my twins marked me as different right away. Every parent in ParentLand asked if they were “infertility” babies. If I said yes, they would either quickly change the conversation or would ask questions that they did not enjoy hearing the answers to. And they would categorize me as “different”, not as easy to be around as other natives. And one naturally prefers to hang out with others who are familiar.

I felt like that ungainly American in the office of smooth Brit talkers and jokers again. I didn’t understand the patois, the stories of weaning, the talk of trying to prevent an “Oops!” baby, the complaints about how awful it was to be pregnant.

It wasn’t until my second miscarriage, when ParentLand finally rejected me fully, that I realized I needed to find some kind of other support.

Which is when I found Mel, then Lori, then local ex-pats Bodega and Esperanza. And now, all of you reading.

Darcy often worries about me: why didn’t having twins make me happy and shinny and, well, normal? I think the truth is, I got culture shock. I was back in London again, but this time without the amazing friends I had there to back me up and make me feel at home.

I took way too long to find “my people.”

But I am so happy I did.

Post #200: On Passivity, Confrontations and Trying to Learn From Mistakes

“But sometimes, if I don’t push you in the right direction, you end up standing still.”

Leslie Knope, Parks and Recreation

Today I had the tremendous pleasure of meeting the fabulous blogger Luna and her beautiful children. She is so smart, witty and kind. And both of her daughters are gorgeous. They were so well-behaved and just a joy. After reading the surprising, harrowing and exhilarating tale of baby Z (which was more thrilling than most books I read this year), it was so beautiful and moving to see her with her mother and sister.

And then there were my children. I love them dearly (I know I don’t need to tell YOU this) but my children are different than me. Darcy is someone I would describe as a strong personality. He confronts life head-on, tackles problems directly and quickly. Like the literary character I named him after, he’s blunt, forceful and says what he thinks.

I am none of these things. I am supportive, nurturing, complimentary, and passive. I’d run a mile to avoid a confrontation.

My children are strong-willed. I am not. So parenting them is a challenge.

The way I have dealt with life is sometimes passive. I do my best and work hard but don’t chase down the great opportunities. I let pretty good opportunities come to me and so my life is filled with mediocre achievements. I have a blog with mediocre traffic. I haven’t redesigned the site yet, because the designers I reached out to were busy for months in advance. So I…took no further action.

Anyway, this brings me to the tussle I had with Esperanza, and it was pretty close to the fight between Ann Perkins and Leslie Knope on my favorite ever episode of “Parks and Recreation”. In the episode, Leslie, a type A go-getter gets annoyed at Ann for not pursuing an opportunity and says often Ann stands still.

Esperanza’s concern with me is that I wasn’t taking any strong steps forward to developmental specialists who could help me manage the kids better.

Here’s an exact copy of our exchange, in which I admit I was humiliated by the way my children behaved around Luna’s angelic children.

Me: “I had a playdate with Luna today and the kids were awful. I was so embarrassed.”

And then she responded, via text, this:

“I don’t mean to sound harsh, but if I were you I’d be doing something proactive with the kids. Trying a new strategy or having people from Xxxxx help you out. You can learn that stuff and get better at it.”

And then, I burst into tears.

The truth is I have been working with a child development specialist to try to help me better manage the twins. She tells me they should be incredibly successful adults, but as a non-strong-willed adult, it is very difficult for me to maintain the energy needed to provide the structure, the nos, the answers, the feedback they need. I do it, every day, and will continue to do it, but at great cost to me.

Esperanza’s right: I need to continue to take a very proactive stand with my kids.

They say you can change a habit in 30 days. Is it possible to change an innate personality trait, like passivity, and get rid of it? If I could and standing up to them all the time wasn’t so exhausting, maybe parenting would be easier?

Have you ever been able to change an actual part of your personality? If so, how?